I listen to my words, but they fall far below/I let my music take me where my heart wants to go

Making it through Sunday

I love Lucinda Williams' work. And I love
that song Sundays. I can't find it on YouTube
or I'd post it.

It does seem like the hardest day to get through
for reasons I don't fully comprehend.

Kept it rather low key today. Got up late, around
9 or so. Couldn't believe I slept that late. Cooked
an omelet for my son and me--a throw bunches of stuff
you like into the mix omelet. It was quite yum. He made
the coffee (which he always does now--he's quite the coffee
connoisseur or snob!) and likes only whole bean, full-bodied coffees.

I bought him some amaretto when I went shopping with
my daughter-in-law last week. I love amaretto coffee!
I bought myself a beautiful bowl--it's a huge salad or vegetable
bowl that matches this set of dishes. My dishes have three
shades of colors--a yellow ochre, like my walls, a reddish-yellow,
and a reddish-orange, so the bowl is just great. I needed new
clothes, but what do I do when I go shopping for the first time
in god only knows how long? I buy a bowl. On sale. 23.00

After that, I read the paper and cleaned the kitchen. I also
actually talked my son into playing a game of Scrabble with
me. We were tearing the board up with words like chair
and fart--I think the closest we got to a word that might
be construed as a decent Scrabble word and play was the word nexus.

Let's just say that it's a good thing neither of us was terribly
concerned about scoring in the 4 or 500s!

***************************

Alone now. Son at work. Hubby racing. Haven't answered my
messages today, though one of them was from someone I really
do want to talk to and have not talked to in some time. Was
jsut drifting when the call came in.

Read some Neruda, Sexton, & Stevens today. Also decided I wanted
to read some plays (have not read any in some time and there
is no theater here on a regular basis and I wish there was as I love
to go). Read Desire Under The Elms and The Cherry Orchard.

Think I'll read 'night, Mother, Spoils of War, & Burn This tonight.



I feel rather comfortably tired today.

You gave me more to live for/more than you'll ever know

Feeling lighter

...than I have in some time. It helps to know
where you stand in life, and when it's time to let
go of something that drags you down. I am grateful
that I made the decision to do that today(with a little
help and encouragement) about an issue
that has cost me so much of late.

*************************

Spent part of the morning raking the mess from last week's
storm. There are still around 100,000 people across KY without
power from the remnants of Ike. There are still many in this
community who do not have power. My yard is still covered
in the debris. I found someone's tax statement in my yard--
they live 23 miles from here. There are cushions from lawn
furniture, letters, chairs, lots of branhes and leaves, and just
an assortment of trash in the yard. I only managed to get
the front cleaned up today. If my energy holds out, I'll try to do
some more later.

**************************************

Last night's meal: I browned a pork tenderloin
in some olive oil. I salt and peppered it and sprinkled
some onion and garlic powder on it. I removed it
from the pan and placed it in a foil lined glass baking
dish. I deglazed the pan with white wine and a little
chicken stock. I added to that freshly chopped basil,
oregano, and thyme and I grated some fresh garlic
into the sauce. I let it cook down a little and then
poured it over the tenderloin. Cooked it at 325 for
a few hours. I served a diced sweet potato and sliced
granny smith apple dish with it and some steamed
broccoli. The sweet potato dish was roasted at 400
for about 30 minutes. It was quite good.

***************************************

Yesterday's Classic Peanuts was indeed classic. Wish my scanner
was working correctly so I could scan it. Lucy is standing in her
Psychiatric Help booth speaking to Linus. She says: Living
is living! Living is what counts! In the next frame, she says:
People come to me and ask me how to live...I tell them that
to live is to live! Living is what makes living!
Next frame: Linus walks past the little curly-haired girl.
Last frame: The little curly-haired girl says: Is the doctor in?
Linus says, as he walks away: No, I think she's way out!

I love it!

**********************************

A friend called yesterday and asked me how I felt about collaborating
on a book of poems and essays. She'll send a line or two, I'll send her
some thoughts, she'll send another line or two and the process will
go on. She will reciprocate. We discussed a few poems we think
will fit the idea we have for the book, and we have a title. I'm excited.

On that note, I received a rejection from Ploughshares. Just a standard
"Dear Writer" letter. Oh well. It happens.

************************************

I have been so down for so long that I am not sure what it will be like
to be up again. It frightens me in many ways to think about it.

Though I have much work to do to help myself get better, I am
feeling now that I don't have a choice if I want to be around for some
time. I have to take better care of me.

It saddens me that when we are at our most vulnerable, the people
we thought we could trust the most to be there and to hang tight
with us don't do it. It's hurtful. For them to lose sight of all the things
you were before your world came crashing down just makes you
realize they must not have cared the way you thought they did.

That's not an easy thing to accept, but to move on, it has to be
accepted and dealt with.


As Nietzsche says: That which does not destroy us makes us stronger.


I hope that is true.

************************************

A few other Nietzsche quotes:


And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Tom Waits - Take Me Home

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.


Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Sylvia Plath

The Clean Up


...goes on. We were actually spared so much.

Certainly, those on the coast of LA and TX
got slammed. So many lost homes, so many
without power, so many still in shelters.
I have not heard anything about casualties.
I do hope that the majority of people heeded
the warnings and evacuated. I've only been through
one hurricane, and it was nothing like what
happened with Katrina or Ike.

Here, we got high sustained winds. Our schools are back
in session tomorrow, but many surrounding
counties will not be going. Some of them are
not expected to have power back on until
Friday. Many of the utility workers are in
LA or TX, so they are being called back home
to help get the power restored.

********************************************

On a lighter note, at least 4 people I have come
into contact with in the last week have told me I look
like Sarah Palin. I don't like her politics, but her
physical appearance is not so horrific. Even tonight,
after I showed my husband the SNL spoof, he said,
You know what? You kind of look like her. Must be
because my hair is long now, and I keep it swept up,
much like she does. It's too hot to keep it down. And my
glasses look similar. It's just weird to have more than
one person tell me that they think that. Hmmmm....
The SNL piece is so damn funny. Tina Fey nailed Palin
in body, voice, and mannerisms. I hope she'll do some
more Palin stuff.

***********************************************

Just good old spaghetti tonight. In this small town,
it's hard to find San Marzano tomatoes (canned),
but lately, Kroger has had them. They make all
the difference in a sauce. We had salad, a loaf of deli
garlic bread (stuffed with whole cloves of garlic),
and the spaghetti. I am stuffed.

*************************************************

the writing life is all but over now. Not one single thing
I can put down on paper. I have been playing solitaire
since the power went out yesterday (well, not all night,
but into the evening hours last night and much of this
morning).

What was really positive and enlightening and interesting
was the fact that all the neighbors, all over this block, were
out and about and talking to one another. We were all busy
cleaning up the debris, but we were also stopping in the midst
of our labor to talk to one another. A rare thing these days.

************************************

Just an aside. The moon was extraordinary on the 13th into
the 14th, before the winds came. Don't think it was a moonbow--
not sure what to call it. I was way past gone anyway, but I took
a blanket outside, placed it as far away from the safety light
as I could, and stretched out to look at the sky. In the center
of total blackness was the full moon. Measuring from the imperfect
perception of my vision, and knowing fully well that the blackness
had to extend for such a huge amount of space that I have no
guess, I will just say that, to my eyes, it looked like 100 yds or so
of black in a 360 around the moon. And then, outside of that
blackness, there was a ring of light. And then the wind started
to blow, lightly at first, and then, harder. My old boy, Dante, came
to lie down beside me on the blanket. I feared the branches of the tree
would soon come crashing on top of us, so I came inside and crashed,
only to wake at 4:30 or so with the wind howling. What an amazing
sky and night and day. I felt so alive out there on that blanket,
the wind blowing my hair, the moon full, my cat purring next to me,
most people in the neighborhood asleep, the night air filling my lungs,
the fear of possible disaster alerting me that I was still very much alive,
the ability to stand and walk back in the house nothing short of
something damn near amazing in and of itself.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.